New Virtual Mobility with Macedonian Students

Virtual mobility is a part of internationalisation at home which provides an international experience also to students studying at home. This year’s virtual mobility was implemented in the Crisis Communication and Management course which included Serbian-speaking students of DOBA Business School and post-graduate students of the Institute of Communication Studies from Skopje (FYR Macedonia).

It was undoubtedly a major challenge to unite students from two different language areas living in twelve countries in different time zones, from the United States of America, Russia, China, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Norway, and Switzerland to Serbia, Slovenia, and Macedonia with the Macedonian students studying in traditional mode. For this reason, Macedonian students began the course three weeks earlier to familiarise themselves with online learning.  Getting to know each other was not the only initial challenge for students. Already at the first joint webinar they were organised into virtual ad hoc mixed teams and without being given previous notice they had to tackle a make-believe, but realistic, crisis which they had to solve in very little time, a task they successfully completed.

This is how course holder Pedja Ašanin Gole, who has extensive expensive with virtual mobility projects in his courses, described this year’s experience: “This time, special attention in strategic and crisis communication was placed on studying management and crisis communication in the aeronautics industry. In the remaining weeks of the course, students continued working in mixed Serbian and Macedonian teams and studied, analysed, and compared numerous examples of crisis circumstances in the aeronautics industry from the viewpoint of situational crisis communication theory. Later, they applied the knowledge to the preparation of crisis communication plans for the international airport in Zagreb. Together with the visiting lecturer and tutor Lidia Capković Martinek, adviser to the public relations manager of the Zagreb airport, we prepared a different scenario of crisis circumstances for each team. At the last webinar held in the context of the course, the students presented the prepared crisis communication plans.”

DOBA Business School teachers are planning other similar virtual projects for their courses for this academic year. The next project will take place in March in cooperation with the Dutch NHL Stenden University.